


You were beating breath into my lungs like a nuclear looped up drum

by refur42 (sigurfox)



Series: Leftovers [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Depression, Disturbing thoughts, M/M, Misery, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, POV Steve, Self-Hatred, Sickness, Skinny Steve, amputee bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9106927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigurfox/pseuds/refur42
Summary: Post-apocalyptic world. People on earth are evaporated, cities are turned to dust. The reality is ruin and decay, ash and black snow under the heavy dark skies that don’t let sunrays in. Desolation. Vicious storms. Steve and Bucky seem to be the only people left on the planet, they’re on their endless way to find somebody to join to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my native language.

This is the end. Yes, this is it. This is how it ends for Steve. Just a bitter end of another small, pathetic life.

A storm moves through the ravaged landscape. It carries the remnants of the world across the desolation. Every structure picked apart, patterns unraveled, mechanisms dismantled, contraptions deranged… The entire technosphere of Earth is stripped of its from and purpose, and reduced to multiton piles and clouds of miniscule pieces. Just a dead weight now.

The air is dirty and the snow is a fusion of compressed thorny snowflakes. Black ice like barbed wire. Mixed with sand, dust and ash, it twirls in charcoal and ebony swarms. Always such an impetuous, rapid, unexpected attack. It pounces at Steve and Bucky. Howling. A rampant ghost of once vigorous nature.

Steve wants to howl too.

His throat is closing up, and panic wells up quick in his stomach, twisting his insides. Ruthless, it rises. It’s like a voltage jump. As soon as he realizes he can’t breathe, can't get a gulp of air in his lungs... he knows this is the end.

_You should have gotten used to it by now you stupid useless shit._

But still, after so many times, panic feels like a thunderbolt through his body anyway. Fear holds him tight and burns his guts down, while he struggles to inhale this poisonous foul air. Wheezing, making horrible creaking noises, like a wet wooden board.

He rips the scarf off his face. And the wind, wafting grime, settles down on his tongue, fills his nose, eyes, ears. And it’s clearly not helping, but Steve doesn’t care anymore, can’t care right now, can’t think.

_Oh my god, it's so horrible…_

There is a hand on Steve’s shoulder, Bucky’s hand. A strong grip, meant to be grounding, reassuring, soothing. And his calming voice murmurs words of encouragement and comfort. Somewhere far away in the enormous astronomical distance, it fades under the power of the wind’s gashing wails.

The hood of Steve’s parka falls off his head, Bucky adjusts it back into place. Tries to shield Steve, to block the hurricane. Helpless. But vile ash penetrates everything, cold and stinging.

Steve can feel it inside, tiny particles crawling under his skin.

Steve doesn’t hear what Bucky says, he grasps Bucky’s hand and squeezes. His vision starts to blacken at the edges. Not that he sees much anyway even when he’s okay, but... Is he ever okay? What is a normal state? What is a stable condition?

Clawing at his throat, he falls down on his knees. His head pulses, it’s going to explode. Bucky crouches in front of him.

Why does it have to be that way? He doesn’t even mind dying… But why it has to be so terrifying and painful?

He already surrendered, oh please…

_Oh nature, elements, mother Earth, why beat up an already surrendered man?_

Please, stop, please, make it stop, Bucky…

He prays to Bucky, he stopped praying to god long ago. Steve lifts his head, looks up at Bucky’s blurred face. An image distorted by bad vision, storm haze, tears. Image steaming, reshaping, Bucky’s beautiful dear face…

Contorted in horror, probably. Steve himself must look awful, nasty pallid facade of a fish gasping for air on the shore.

_Oh, it hurts so much._

_Bucky…_

Steve falls on the ground covered in harsh ice, and finally everything goes black.

 

* * *

 

Wow, cities have skeletons too. Once you peel the fleshy veneer off and scatter it in the wind, the bones reveal themselves. Bones of a dead creature. Just a rusted carcass, tall and proud remains of former glory.

Ruined buildings are rotten teeth, caving in. Skyscrapers are sticks, world’s late autumn boughs. Knitting needles stuck out from the earth.

They walk between the city’s bared ribs, counting vertebrae. Charred, congelated, dried out. Walk across the desolation, passing empty fields and empty towns. Scavenging food, clothes, anything that can possibly be of use.

Weapons, too. It’s not like there are animals to hunt on or human gangs to defend themselves from. But they search for people after all. No one knows whom they might stumble on.

Robbing the subverted houses of the last they’ve got lets Steve and Bucky have their moments of warmth and short serenity. Sleep. Broken windows, hollow eye sockets, stare at them afterwards as they leave. Their blackness, indifferent, follows them. That’s all there is now. Ruin, wreck and trash, silence, this awfully dull lack of colour. Only pareidolia in bloom, faces evoked by bad vision and bored mind.

It’s hard to breathe.

So far the only dangers are cold and storms. As for people, seems like everyone just disappeared. Evaporated from the planet along with its history. Everyone in the world… gone. Deleted, dropped dead, sunk through the ground.

Nothing saves from the storms. No matter what corner you drive yourself in, icy dust always finds a way to get to you. On the road they have no shelter at all. A hood, a scarf, a blanket, a broken tent. Each other.

By dusk of day, indistinguishable shapes moan. Wallowing, mourning their wasted existence, as merciless wind blows through all, like neutrino.

 

* * *

 

Steve finds himself standing behind Bucky, who’s crouching on the ground above Steve’s body.

_What…_

His broad back hunched, shoulders sagged down, one lower than the other. An enormous worn-out backpack. Swirls of wind gush around them, dozens of tornadoes, each small but powerful.

Steve startles belatedly and looks at his hands. They’re ordinary, just like he remembers them. Slim fingers, stained with ingrained dirt, calloused skin, dry and tight, ill looking.

But he feels all right.

He presses palms to his stomach, chest. Solid, warm, okay. _He’s all right._

He notes that he hears everything in such a precise clear manner, it’s overwhelming. He sees everything. Sees Bucky’s black miserable form on the ground, ragged and notched in its presenilation and insignificance. Almost a formless heap. Gathering in small mounds around them both, dust flies and falls in large flakes.

Bucky’s long dirty hair, hanging from under the hood, obscure his face. He leans over Steve, shaking him by the shoulders.

Steve’s heart clenches at the sight. He wants to touch Bucky, to hug him, to protect him from the vicious cruelty of the moment. To tell him everything is all right.

But why, why is he all right? Did he die? Seems like it. Then why does he still exist? Is he a ghost? Is he bound to this damaged earth now? Is he bound to Bucky?

Bucky’s hoarse call resonates in Steve’s stomach with unpleasant tractive sensation. He bends over and sways, presses his hands to his belly.

_Steve, Steve, no no no, Steve…_

Bucky’s voice falters, failing him, fading from time to time. Chopping hitchy phrases into incoherent snippets. From screams to sobs, to whispers. O _h god, oh god, Steve,_ he’s mumbling under his breath as he hurriedly shifts around, shrugging off his backpack.

Steve wants to stop him. To reach out, sooth him, tell him it’s okay. But he can’t bring himself to it, too scared his hand will pass through Bucky’s shoulder. He fears to embrace the finality of it, the fatal conviction... that he’s never going to touch him again.

He can’t just leave Bucky here alone in this hell to freeze and suffocate. Languish in misery among the horrors of empty space and storms, can't leave him walking the earth to fill its emptiness. In hunger and cold and global monumental loneliness.

1 2 3 4 5… Bucky presses down his hand directly over Steve’s breastbone and starts doing the compressions in fast rhythm, jerky powerful motions. 6 7 8 9 10. Pumping like a machine. 11 12. It’s tricky to do with just one arm but he does it. Bucky’s strong. 13 14 15 16. Always has been. 17 18. Always performs difficult tasks. 19 20. Unlike… 21 22. Steve. 23 24 25. Few more and then he leans over Steve’s face, guides his head, tipping it slightly back. Seals his lips over Steve's mouth and pumps air into his lungs. A couple of rescue breaths, and he moves back to chest compressions. 1 2 3…

Steve doesn’t have a right to die when Bucky has to lead the wretched existence. Bucky doesn’t deserve this.

Bucky repeats the cycle several times. He keeps doing it. More and more time passes. Time, during which it’s possible to bring a person back, has run out. But Bucky’s persistent. He never gives up. He sobs in equal moments of time, quiet. Steve is mesmerized, he doesn’t move, he doesn’t even know if he can. Steve doesn’t want to see Bucky’s face twisted in pain. Doesn’t want to see tears rolling down his cheeks. It’d hurt too bad, it’d be way more painful than an asthma attack. Or most likely, anything else.

His hands are not cold. Physical pain doesn’t exist anymore… it’s so tempting to stay here… or move on, to go somewhere… a new world, a better place. But this all-absorbing sadness, annoyance at Bucky’s steady attempts to bring him back to life… Bucky’s not human, he’s a machine. He’d do it till the end of time, over and over again, two breaths, thirty compressions, two breaths, thirty compressions. One looped-up moment of wait and hope.

_There’s always time to die._ But not now. _Why not now though?_

Minutes pass and Bucky starts hitting Steve’s body in the chest with his fist. Steve’s ghost starts to cry.

 

* * *

 

Snow and ash blow in soft loose eddies over the cracked blacktop to the hills beyond. Reality pales away. Steve drags himself like an impossibly old man, hardly managing to keep eyes open. Bucky scans the landscape with his gaze, sharp as razor, in search of any movement, distant fire flicks or columns of smoke.

When the wind abates for a second, Steve takes off his glove, pulls down the scarf. Sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. Sneezes several times in a row, and then doubles over in a coughing fit.

Bucky strokes his back. _Damn, it's a disaster._

The world has become so hollow. Not just empty but hollow. Steve can’t get rid of the feeling that he walks in a tunnel. The world has developed walls. Invisible but impenetrable.

They walk down the slippery slope, Bucky holds Steve’s hand so tight it hurts. Steve likes it. Feeling something rather than numbness in his hands, a blessing. The meandering river below in the vast dale now resembles a moor. Dead lichen and moss along the shore. Charred tree trunks, logs of long dead wood. Drooping hands with wrinkled gnarled fingers lay on the ground framing the moor. The ominous landscape stretches away and gets lost in the murk. The wind whines, sparsely rushing across the waste as if in alarm. Snow turns into a mud under their feet threatening to ruin their shoes. Bucky always worries about it.

Every second Steve thinks he will not wade another meter, one more step. But he does. And after few infinite minutes the craggy remnants of a town welcome them. Like charcoal sketches Steve once drew.

Buildings stand abandoned. Houses missing roofs, second floors, walls. Like corpses missing limbs. Conked out asphalt leads them to each and every one of them. They ransack homes but nothing is left, save for the shittiest, rotten, most useless stuff. Spoiled food, worn-out clothes crumbling at just a touch.

Any water smells of machine grease or hell knows what.

Steve has been retching way too often lately. Bucky is unfathomable. Nothing affects him.

He laughs, he’ll alone survive the catastrophe along with fellow cockroaches. Steve laughs too, a laughter of a crow. In fact he feels like a burden. Lagging behind Bucky, slowing him down, occupying his precious time, wasting his strength.

_I love you, Steve. Your life, health, well-being - that’s what gets me going, makes me wake up in the mornings, helps me move on, fight for us, be strong. Self loathing doesn’t give you a right to wish death upon yourself. You are not worthless no matter what you think of yourself. I love you, does it mean nothing to you? I love you._

Life is reduced to a never-ending quest for food and shelter. It’s an infinite journey to some hypothetical society, organized somewhere at the edge of the world. They hasn’t seen anyone for such a long time.

 

* * *

 

Steve blinks. The world disappears and then rematerializes again. In its full horrendous grandeur, dull weight and foul taste. Pain brackets him immediately as he resurfaces, cocoons him in spiky veil made of iron. He’s coughing violently and gasping for air as if he’s been pulled from the water.

_Water, you wish._

He tries to open his eyes, they’re full of sand or something like that, it hurts, he blinks frequently.

Somewhere far-far away he hears, "Steve, Steve, oh my god…"

Bucky hugs Steve , clumsy, with one arm. Attaching the small papery form to his broad chest, forgetting Steve still struggles to catch a breath… "Oh my god," he keeps mumbling. 

Steve doesn’t pray to god anymore. Bucky brings him back to life, Bucky gives him air again. This man is god.

As soon as he stops coughing, Steve is knackered, feeling spineless and limp like a ragdoll. He narrows his eyes. His rescuer’s relieved face comes a little bit more into focus. Bucky leans in to kiss his cheek, his forehead. Smudged colours and distorted shadows turn into sharp streaks. Steve sees the blue of his beloved’s eyes and smiles.

This man is god.

He knows tears clear paths down his dirty cheeks. He wishes he could cry rivers, only without pain.

 

* * *

 

"Seems we’re last men on earth," Bucky picks at the can of fish, miraculously found in the ruins of the former shop, with his knife.

He sits cross-legged before a small bonfire. Steve is sick, he’s caught a cold again. Bundled up, curled in small roll, he lies opposite of Bucky, watching him. Dazed. Eyes half lidded.

Steve’s hands are so thin. He doesn’t even have strength in them both to open a can of fish. He’d starve if he even had a full stock of it, a year supply. He’d starve if it wasn’t for Bucky, a one-armed man.

Steve looks in disgust at his knobby knuckles, prominent tendons under thin transparent skin. If only he could help Bucky endure this ordeal of an existence. Help somehow, anyhow… But he’s completely and utterly useless. If only he was normal. He hides his hand under the blanket.

Once Bucky spifflicates the tin-coated steel, he raises the open can, triumphant. Grinning at Steve. "Hey," he says, "Here, our glorious supper is ready."

1 2 3…

He moves closer to Steve, wiggling his ass on the ground, and nudges Steve’s shoulder gently. Steve sits up, suppressing a grunt. Bucky’s arm is large, warm and thick. Bucky looks alive. Steve looks like a ghost.

Fish smells terrific. Steve isn’t even sure if it smells good or bad, it smells something like fish and it’s enough. Steve holds a can in one hand and it trembles. Bucky gives him his second unnecessary glove but it isn’t the cold.

The stormy skies hang low, atomic, heavy and fuming. Like a waterlogged ceiling. And it’s snowing black. Peaceful.

 

* * *

 

All Steve can see is a mingle of dull colours, fuzzy lines and shapes, a mess of matter. He squints at things around and at Bucky’s face. He’s never had a good eye sight but after the cataclysm he fears he’s starting to turn blind because of the dust. The mere thought makes him want to vomit.

Steve’s eyes are acid. Acid pours over anything his gaze lands on. Alternates images, smudges them into something indistinguishable.

Bucky’s face is just a patch framed by black hair. Most of the time Bucky resembles a wounded animal, humped and limping. But extremely dangerous. He’s enchanted. Spell bound to this horror. He’s got a big kitchen meat knife up his boot and another smaller one on his belt. Steve has a gun. Bucky insisted on him having it.

Steve gets close to Bucky to see his features. Bucky smiles at him when Steve kisses him. Scarves back on their faces, they go further hand in hand. Bucky’s right hand in Steve’s left, Steve’s left ear to Bucky’s right. Steve doesn’t hear with the right one.

Sometimes he covers his left ear with a palm firmly. It blocks out all the sounds: winds howling, metal creaking under the weight of ice and snow. All the weird sounds filling imagination with scary images.

It feels like being in a bunker. Just a distant hum.

Also his bunged-up nose can’t breathe because of cold. Voice hoarse because of coughing all the time. He talks only in whispers. Sometimes he doesn’t talk at all for long-long hours. Laying yet another burden on Bucky’s shoulders.

Steve’s hands are freezing cold, his feet are freezing cold. Bucky doesn’t let him sleep. He makes him jump and exercise a little. Jumping with him.

4 5 6…

"Come on, Steve, just a little," he says, "Just to get your blood running again."

"I have no blood," Steve whines.

"Ya you do, unfortunately we both do," Bucky says, making him drink hot water, warmed up in a tin can above the fire.

 

* * *

 

They slide and stick in the mud ridiculously. Steve falls to his knees and the fabric of his trousers gets soaked through in an instant. He mutters curses under his breath as he is being pulled up by Bucky's mighty arm like a broken toy.

The standing trees are thick but lifeless - never to bear green leaves again. They are the dark staffs, smooth poles of shamans, gates to the world of the dead. On the ground the entanglement of fallen trees. Their branches a predatory web across something that looks like leaf mold. Crunching pathetically as Steve and Bucky walk on it.

Bucky spots the ridge of a rock standing out above a pit. Good hiding place. Hopefully dry. Steve shivers, he can't stop his teeth clattering. The soaked scarf clings to his face uncomfortably.

The cold gray expanses of rain mixed with black snow invade the air.

They set up their long-suffering tent in the cove. So they hide in a ditch sheltered by the tarp, a canvas to help themselves with in their turbulent sail. They sit huddled together shuddering in their parkas and blankets. Steve stretches out his bare palm under the rain, earning an angry remark from Bucky, and discovers the water is oily. Slimy like numerous legs of a prehistoric sea creature.

The dust is flocked up in large volatile flakes which fall and pile up at the edge of their asylum. Black mountains. Between the black hills and a crumpled edge of the overhanging cliff there's a line of sky. Mantled by a dark sheet. Heavy metallic clouds, ever-changing, float under the infinite spread of coal firmament.

Steve and Bucky lie down and snuggle up close together in that small space. Finally they can take their scarves off their faces. Steve buries his nose in Bucky’s neck and Bucky presses his lips to Steve’s forehead. They entangle their limbs. Steve squirms to settle into the warm embrace more comfortably.

"Stop squirming, you restless little polecat."

7 8 9…

Steve snorts. Bucky lies on his bad side hugging Steve with him arm so that Steve could lie on his bad side too and hear Bucky.

Steve asks, "Are you all right like this?"

"Yeah, I’m good, baby."

Steve tilts his chin to kiss the corner of Bucky’s mouth, a light press of chapped lips. Bucky returns the kiss and smiles.

Steve does it automatically. On inertia. A gesture of past routine, pleasant routine.

He turns his head to look at the sky. There are so many shapes, they’re evolving in their run across the concave. So quick they remind Bucky of smoke, he comments.

Steve can’t quite see the shapes. To his glance everything morphs into one grey vastness.

"Tell me about the shapes."

"Don’t wanna sleep?"

"Nah, I wanna know about the shapes."

And Bucky tells him about wolves turning into crocodiles, dragons transforming into human faces, train cars, furnaces, houses, coastlines, fjords.

10 11 12…

Steve has always wanted to see fjords. A distant memory of a former wish ghosts somewhere in the back of his mind. To his surprise he realizes it doesn’t matter anymore. Not the wish itself, but the memory doesn’t matter. It's like a trace of something forgotten, part of a long gone dream. It still lingers in the brain by sheer mistake. An instant and it evaporates as Steve blinks.

"I miss colours," Steve says.

"I miss music," Bucky says.

Steve thinks for a moment. "Do you remember what was the last song you listened to?"

He hates that kind of talk. Nostalgic conversations about good old times. But he asks and he doesn’t know why.

"Yeah," Bucky says with warmth in his voice, "It was Pink Floyd."

"Dogs! Yeah," remembers Steve, "I came home with groceries, and you were sitting on the floor right before the dynamics blasting Dogs," Steve laughs rusty, "In that moment you looked stoned."

"I was inside the song, Stevie."

Steve thinks they’re in inside a song now.

Bucky talks a lot about music. In fact, once he starts he can't shut up.

13 14 15…

"It is classic, Steve," Bucky proceeds, "The astute visualization. Possesses an ageless quality."

Undying. Where is this ageless quality now? Steve doesn’t say it aloud. Too much wasted energy. And Bucky would feel aggrieved.

"Those tracks are like a fortress... of… influential similes and imagery. A fortress not a protection, but a looming scary presence, you know. Something solid, grandeur, not to be ignored."

Steve knows.

"This," he gestures indistinctly around, "will normalize eventually… it's a matter of a few years, I believe. But humanity will take hundreds or thousands of years to work up to the same level. Maybe, won’t revive at all. Who will survive these few years?"

_We?_

"The earth gets rid of its parasites," Bucky a philosopher says, "quite an extreme cleansing process Isn't there something good in it?"

"No one will live to learn a lesson out of it. So what is the point?" Steve rasps.

"There is no point, Steve. Humanity is over. Our journey of the universe perception is over. This fatality... It's devastating. I’m drowsy, Steve. I daydream. I only always worry for you, but for all other things..."

"I don’t want it to be over. Along with pigs, dogs and sheep there were good people too."

"Meerkats like you. Little stoats."

"Ah stop it," Steve rolls his eyes.

"You can argue with me all you want but I am glad that insectile fuss is finished."

He speaks like a god. And a liar.

"I don’t believe you, honey B."

"Did you just call me a honey bee?"

"You call me a polecat."

"Cynicism and hope, Steve. The sound of Animals would still suit us. Loneliness, death and lies."

When Steve says, "Goodnight, Bucky," Bucky replies with "Have a good drown."

They’re inside a song. Orphans wandering in the horrendous monstrosity of a world. Struggling in vain, losing to severe nature over and over again...

Steve thinks their conversations sound like ones of ghosts. Last song you listened to. Dreams you used to cherish when you were alive. Fluffy clouds on the blue sky you could see.

_We’re still alive, Steve, why do you call it losing?_

_Alive?_

"You used to think Dogs was the most depressive song," Steve says.

"It is! I still think that," Bucky says.

16 17 18…

Steve falls silent. He doesn’t think in present anymore. Bucky continues, "You find it positive because you yourself are a ray of sunshine. See good in everything… a person full of hope and righteous anger."

A person full of shit. Steve laughs bitter, "I suppose I’m not that anymore."

Bucky sighs and squeezes Steve’s shoulders, "And I used to have an arm. So what? You're still you."

And they hibernate in the substratum of the void. The core of stagnation, their ditch, surrounded by occasional useless rage. Cold, bone wrenching howls of the dreary wind. Rusted things, strays, detached from their cogs, Steve and Bucky. Scattered in the world. Sustained by nothing.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Steve imagines how he would live, cocooned in senseless night and quiet. If things continued to gradually get worse and worse. He doesn’t feel well, and it's addictive to wallow in pessimistic thoughts. He knows he should fight it. But he doesn’t. He’s scared like he's never been before in his previous life. Fear, fatigue and depression dull the feeling to the point of throbbing emptiness. He doesn’t care. Enduring day after day, he relishes only one dream: to die in the appropriate time.

_The day it wouldn’t hurt Bucky?_

Bucky is here. He's humming as he prepares breakfast for them. An off-key tune and a few dried crackers -- all they've got. He lays them out in tact with his meditative refrain. Lays them out in the safe place under their thin quivering tent. Like Steve’s personal field kitchen witch, creating comfort and joy where there is none. _Creating memories._ Something Steve gave up on doing long ago.

19 20 21…

Steve sees himself as a flimsy man, ancient fragile piece, a fossil. Threatening to crumble and turn into dust in any moment. He used to be sick a lot, yeah, he used to pick fights and to lose. Innumerous times he was roughed up, beaten, bloodied. It was a weird kind of clairvoyant preparation to the following calamity. But now when the real hardship has come, he has no strength. Now he knows: back then he never had real problems. Even when he was sick with pneumonia… it wasn’t dangerous, wasn’t real. Compared to this - no.

He knows he's going to die. And it isn’t even the scariest scenario. Of course, he fears death. But he fears Bucky’s overmastering grief, that would lead him to giving up too, more.

Steve's afraid of the void full of constant pain and slow decay.

He loses his voice – already now it's a whisper, raspy and harsh. His throat hurts all the time. He stopped talking almost at all. His eyes are killing him. Inexorably itching, they’re full of dust. As if sandpaper shavings are stuck under his eyelids.

He blinks several times, rubs his eyes. Wastes few drops of precious water to clean them. But nothing helps much. Bucky is still a grotesque dark figure crouching beside the dancing fire.

His good ear is starting to give out too.

Steve asks Bucky how they'll communicate if he will turn blind, deaf and mute. Bucky says this will not happen and Steve should not think about it. Steve gets angry. He is not a fucking child and they don’t live in a bloody fairy tale. Bucky watches him, intent, and listens to his strident tirade, completely calm. He bores Steve with his gaze, which Steve can’t see but can feel on his face. Steve finishes and immediately feels ashamed. Opens his mouth to apologize but Bucky says, "I’ll be tracing letters on your palm. And when we’ll get to a safe place you’ll get proper treatment."

22 23 24…

_I’ll be tracing letters on your palm._

It’s fucking bullshit and they both know it. But Bucky understands that replicating the unhappy fact, truth though it is, over and over again aloud will not help the situation.

Steve asks Bucky to repeat his words several times before he finally comprehends what Bucky says.

Hands are always cold. He won’t feel Bucky’s touch if his hands will go numb too.

Steve cries. Tears comfort his eyes. Steve thinks he should cry more so that he wouldn’t waste Bucky’s valuable water. He sticks his nails into his flesh but it doesn’t hurt. Crying is the only useful thing he’s capable of.

What if he will lose all the senses? He will be less than a plant. In that case he hopes he will leave this body. As soon as it happens. Like he did then, during that asthma attack. Or whatever it was. It seems logical after all. And so, so appealing.

_Would you have mercy on me and kill me? You’d bury me and make a ceremony for my funeral._

Bucky’s hand in Steve’s hair, stroking, smoothing out dirty locks. Bucky pronounces something. Air vibrations Steve doesn't receive. He doesn’t want to ask. There’s no voice left for today.

Bucky sings a song. _Like a child you’ll walk into the unknown._

 

* * *

 

Beneath the ruin and radio silence there is an anodyne comfort, a cozy place by Bucky’s side.

_You're my home._

25 26 27…

Bucky rubs his stump. Steve parts his lips, and he feels like a stone giant, who slept for centuries. First sound that comes out is inhuman gurgle. And next comes the voice Steve doesn’t recognize, a muffled croak.

"Does it hurt?" He coughs out.

"A little," Bucky smiles wearily, "Because of the cold."

"Come ‘er," manages Steve and reaches out his hand. Bucky sits with him and Steve clings to his side wishing he could give all that little warmth he had in his body. To make Bucky stop hurting. But he himself is cold as an ice cube.

"Let’s make love?"

Steve thinks his hearing plays tricks on him again, "What?"

Bucky repeats and Steve says, "You crazy."

"What? It's warm here. We feeling okay. I love you and you love me. Why not?"

They loved and loved, delighted at irretrievability.

 

* * *

 

Shrunken concave carcasses of former cars are encrusted with ash. Relic tracks in the overgrown with ice slush and mire. Steve feels like a shriveled corpse, too. Swathed tight in layers of clothes like in band-aids.

Pitch dark nights. Dead silent nights. He strains to see, to hear. Loud, he clears his throat. Makes noise just to ensure he hasn't turned completely deaf in his sleep. He gets up on wobbling legs. Lurching forward, he stumbles.

Bucky gets up to place a hand on his shoulder, than on his neck, side of his face, shoulder again. Balancing him. The endless tedious circulation in Steve’s mind doesn't stop its depressing computations. He feels like his skull is going to crack.

The granular air leaves grainy taste constantly present in your mouth. Beans in cans, bean in air, beans in eyes. World a bean. Nothing grows on these slopes but despair.

The littered terrace before the cottage comes into view like raw daylight. The cottage only has the walls of the first floor.

"Let’s check this one too."

The front door is blown off and they walk in, civilized people. Bucky peers inside. Snow, ash and dust. Usual scenery. Steve drifts behind like a shadow. Bucky studies furniture debris in the kitchen and the living room, goes through the drawers of the desks that are still intact, cupboard, closets in the bedrooms. But there is nothing that would be of use. Steve and Bucky exchange looks above their scarves.

Engorged books, mouldering, on the table. Stained carpet on the floor. Carpet that once was fussy and soft and warm. They head outside. Dirty linoleum curling at the edges, in the hallway. A massive wardrobe full of trash. It creaks as Bucky opens it. Trash falls out and Bucky steps back. Steve jerks aside, his hand is on the knife immediately. It's nothing, says Bucky.

There’s a telephone. Steve just notices it. A crazy thought comes to his head, an itch to pick up the receiver, to dial a number. The cable is torn, its tail curled on the floor beside the desk.

Bucky goes down the stairs to check the pantry in the basement. He wipes the dust from the lids and studies the jars of canned food.

There are dozens of cans. What an abundance. It’s a miracle. Godsent benevolence. Earth shudders like a heaving beast.

28 29 30.

Bucky laughs like he hasn’t laughed before.  

An instant he emerges from the darkness he wears a grin, a lightning. He gives Steve a roll of thick towel with something inside. "It's our lucky house and this is my present to you." Steve takes and unfolds it to find goggles. Nice cracked glasses. Still better than nothing. "Wow. Thanks."

 

* * *

 

He pushes the edge of the tent and his blanket off and away, careful not to wake Bucky. He raises himself, wincing as the dull pain pours over his joints at each movement. Looking around, blinking, he searches for any light but it’s so dim. A day is one shade paler than night.

Leaving Bucky sleeping, Steve walks out the room, studies the ruins of the living room and the gaping hole in the wall once again. Open jaws of a shark. The desolate, inhospitable country beyond. It's a quiet morning.

Inhale exhale…

He draws Bucky with a coal on grey walls while Bucky sleeps. His hand is unsteady but lines come easy. It doesn’t look perfect because he is trembling. It’s a strain to hold the arm up like this. The sketch doesn’t come out the way he wants. It doesn’t look like Bucky at all. Steve sighs. He’s losing everything. A piece of brownish-black rock shatters in his fingers. Accidentally he scratches the wall with his nails and winces. Broken line leaves a scar on the side of Bucky’s face. Steve can’t stop, he draws and draws anyway. Slow and hesitant. He picks up smaller pieces, cautiously tracing lines on the wall, rubbing the coal into the painting.

The drawing is sad, apocalyptic. And Steve doesn’t want to leave it that way. Suddenly a voice, too close behind him.

"Wow, Stevie."

"Steve jerks and turns around."

"Color or not, you’re brilliant. By finding colorful chalks you could paint the world back into life."

"It’s just…" He waves his hand vaguely, "I found a coal, I thought I…"

"Draw yourself next to me," Bucky suggests.

Steve gets back to work, a few harsh lines and a shape of a tiny man, clinging to Bucky, appears on the wall, close and snug. Side by side, hand in hand, till the end of the line.

Inhale exhale…

"Now this is perfect," Bucky wraps an arm around Steve midsection and kisses his temple, "You feeling better today?"

"I guess… I don’t know." His head aches. "Seems like a storm approaching."

"We’ll hide in the basement. We’re safe now, Steve, do you understand? We’re safe here."

"What about our journey?"

"We’ll resume travelling when we’re well rested, okay?" Bucky whispers into Steve's left ear.

"Okay. You know, I would have liked... this solitude. I like it. If it wasn't the end of the world… I would like it."

"Me too... But we can't stay forever in-"

"I know, I know..."

"Someday we’ll eat up this storage bay and we will have to get moving again."

"Or we could try grow something. I don't know... Some mushrooms perhaps?"

Bucky doesn’t make fun of this idea. "Do you want to stay here for awhile?"

"For a quite long awhile, yeah."

1 2 3…

He shrugs. "Then we'll stay."


End file.
